Settler leader Levinger suffers stroke

Levinger was alert and conscious at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, Arutz 7 radio reported Thursday morning. The news service said he was taken for emergency surgery in the afternoon.

E-mail lists throughout Israel and around the world posted messages asking people to pray for Levinger.

Levinger established the first Jewish presence in Hebron after the 1967 Six-Day War, moving to a former army base on a hill to the northeast of Hebron that became the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Earlier this year he worked with a group of West Bank activists to establish five new outposts.

Levinger has been arrested about a dozen times for altercations with Palestinians, and he has been imprisoned several times involving incidents of violence. In 1991 Levinger was sentenced to seven months in prison for a violent altercation at the Tomb of the Patriachs in Hebron.